William Wall (1) (1955–)
Författare till This Is the Country
För andra författare vid namn William Wall, se särskiljningssidan.
Verk av William Wall
Associerade verk
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Födelsedag
- 1955
- Kön
- male
- Nationalitet
- Ireland
- Priser och utmärkelser
- Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award (1997)
Medlemmar
Recensioner
Listor
Priser
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Associerade författare
Statistik
- Verk
- 12
- Även av
- 1
- Medlemmar
- 103
- Popularitet
- #185,855
- Betyg
- 3.5
- Recensioner
- 5
- ISBN
- 43
- Språk
- 2
A Booker longlister, this turned out to be a fabulous read. It took me about 50 pages to get into it - at the start it was definitely feeling a bit like a Roddy Doyle book or Ardal O'Hanlon's The Talk of the Town (I feel like I've read too many of those now) - but this novel had a lot more depth to it. This is a story of real, honest love, of a bad boy trying to make good, of a past that won't release it's hold on him.
Opening with the protagonist's arrival as a witness at court, you know from the beginning that something has happened, but Wall spins a gripping tale, leaving you constantly turning the pages with a sense of foreboding about what's going to transpire. A small-time player with the bad boys in the town, the leading character ups the ante when he gets the sister of a local gangster pregnant, unintentionally propelling himself into the big league at a time when he wants to forge a path on the straight and narrow.
Written in the first person in the voice of the main character, the prose is modern and the rhetoric 'Irish wide boy' urban street talk, yet somehow Wall also manages to make it poetic and lyrical in places, strongly evoking the sense of quiet solidarity and contentment in the gentle harbour village, and the juxtaposed sense of malice and fear around the estates of the town.
I found this to be a very emotional book - a novel about love and loyalty, grudges and revenge, the harsh reality of being tarred by your past, of wanting release but finding yourself pulled back into the quagmire by an invisible thread.
A surprising but well deserved 4.5 stars.… (mer)